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It takes me right back to the last time I can remember England experiencing such a long period of glorious warmth and sunshine: the near-legendary “Summer of ’76”.

Donna Summer and Abba and Chicago were in the charts. Raleigh Choppers and Space Hoppers were all the rage (obviously I had both). The Omen and Taxi Driver were on at the pictures, though I had to hear about them second-hand via my Swedish or German au pair, probably, because they were rated X and I was only 11…

But the main reason that summer sticks out in the memory for all those of us who were there is that it was so very unusual. It was anomalous, to use the technical term.

Summer in England — in Wales and Scotland even more so — is traditionally a very patchy, unpredictable affair. You never know from one day to the next whether it’s going to be croquet and Pimms on a baked lawn or whether the skies are going to open and it’s going to be a washout. That’s how marquee companies make their fortune. That’s why we all book our expensive holidays to the Med because it’s our one guarantee of getting at least a couple of weeks’ vitamin D and suntan.

Britain is currently in the midst of a heatwave with temperatures as high as 34 degrees C (that’s 94 degrees in old money – fahrenheit).

Some of us are old enough to remember an era – the long hot summer of ’76 for example – when this would have been considered a good thing.

“Phew what a scorcher!” it would say in tabloid headlines and inside there’d be a jaunty picture of Mindy from Beckenham greeting the sunshine with her enormous jugs.

But then, everything was better in the 1970s.

Now, of course, it’s all misery and despair. And there’s perhaps no finer example of this than the piece-of-crap report released by the Committee for Climate Change while I was away sunning myself in Sicily, and assiduously reported by useful idiots like the BBC’s house green activist Roger Harrabin. Naturally, the head of the CCC Lord Krebs was invited on to the BBC’s Today programme where he was given a free pass to promote his environmental version of Project Fear.

Heatwaves fierce enough to kill thousands will become the norm in the UK within 30 years due to climate change, a report prepared for the Government warns.

Repeats of the extreme heat seen in 2003 that killed more than 2,000 people are likely to become routine by the 2040s, leaving the ageing population at particular risk.

The Committee on Climate Change, an independent body that advises the Government, said people living in newer homes faced a greater risk of overheating than those in older properties.

I wish this were true. I like heatwaves because they ward off ice ages; also I’m more than happy that people in new homes should suffer because they smack of health and safety and EU-driven environmental regulation and I think we should all live in draughty old buildings made of stone like I do.

But it’s just not true. Essentially it’s a work of fantasy, 2000 pages of unutterable drivel overseen by a government placeman – Lord Krebs (a zoologist, specialising in ornithology, formerly of the Food Standards Agency) – who we’re supposed to take on trust as an “expert” but who quite obviously knows far less about climate change than your humble Oxford English Literature graduate.

With regards to the heatwave part of the report (it’s just as wrong on stuff like floods, pests and diseases), Homewood notes that there is “no evidence that summers have been getting hotter in recent decades.”

July 1, 2015

Britain is enjoying a spectacular heatwave and I don’t know about the rest of you but I have been enjoying it immensely.

I love the sunshine. I love the way it fries your brain so it feels like you’ve been smoking weed even when you haven’t. I love the gazelle-like legs of all the nubiles in their summer dresses passing me just now as I sipped a flat white on Kensington High Street. I love the fact that, when you’re wearing sunglasses, you can perve freely without anyone realising where your eyes are looking…

But enough summer sunshine fun. It seems that not everyone feels quite as enthusiastic about this glorious mid-90s heat as I do.

This young fellow on Twitter for example who thought it would be a good idea to send me this tweet.

I wonder if Ollie is being sarcastic.

Anyway, I’m grateful to Ollie for at least two reasons. First, I absolutely adore the idea that he imagines me to be so powerful I am in any way responsible for the thing we used to call in the old days “lovely weather.”

Second, because he sweetly included a link to the Guardian which I might otherwise have missed.

It seems that the Guardian has been live-blogging this marvellous sunny day we’ve been having, providing regular updates, in much the same way newspapers more normally do when covering say a breaking story about some hideous terrorist atrocity or some terrible natural disaster.

It includes invaluable tips on how to cope if you’re fasting for Ramadan (as so many of Guardian’s white liberal metropolitan readers are, right now, of course): break it and seek medical attention if you’re seriously ill, advises Shakyh Abdul Hussain of the East London Mosque – though presumably other clerics would disagree strongly with this dangerous liberalism.

There’s a short interview with a devil-may-care couple of pensioners who have recklessly decided to ignore all the Guardian’s invaluable health-and-safety advice and expose themselves to the sun’s deadly rays:

Soaking up the rays on a bench on Gordon promenade, Veronica Josh, 70, and her friend Jean Reay, 71, say they took no notice of the health warnings urging people to stay indoors between 11am and 4pm.

Who says the spirit of punk is dead, eh?

Meanwhile the UN is seizing the opportunity to advance its nannyish, finger-wagging agenda.

The United Nations has urged countries to create better warning systems as a heatwave sweeping western Europe saw temperatures reach 40C.

People with lung problems are basically as good as dead.

Vicky Barber from the British Lung Foundation Helpline said sufferers should avoid going out in the midday heat. “During hot weather, the air we breathe has lower moisture levels than usual, which can have a drying effect on our airways,” she said.

“As a result, people with respiratory conditions such as COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) or severe asthma may find it harder to breathe, feel more tired, or find their lungs feeling heavy or tight.”

Astonishingly, there has been a rise in sales of sun cream:

Superdrug has seen sales of suncare rise by 26% (compared to this time last year) and is predicting sales to rise by an additional 20% this week. The drugstore’s own brand Solait SPF50 suncream is the best seller, with the retailer announcing that it is selling a bottle every 30 seconds.

There has been a mass outbreak of unrepentant sexism:

The ASA said: “We considered the claim ‘Are you beach body ready?’ prompted readers to think about whether they were in the shape they wanted to be for the summer and we did not consider the accompanying image implied a different body shape to that shown was not good enough or was inferior. We concluded that the headline and image were unlikely to cause serious or widespread offence.”

And it’s the hottest July day on record. (Well, at least if you count one data set from one weather station as being symbolic of EVERYTHING).

Just like that, the temperature has soared at Heathrow to make this the hottest day in July since records began. That’s 0.2C higher than 2006’s record.

All of this makes me feel very ancient. I’m old enough to remember a time when sunny days were something to celebrate, not panic about or – as young Ollie seems to imagine – to cite doomily as yet further depressing evidence of man’s refusal to change his selfish carbon-guzzling lifestyle.

Is it just me? Or am I in fact the only surviving refugee from the Summer of ’76 who can remember headlines like “Phew! What a Scorcher!”?

One thought on “Britain’s Day of Burning Hell. Survivors’ eye-witness accounts.”

merrymaking says:3rd July 2015 at 2:02 pmWhen these people talk of “carbon” what, exactly do they mean?
CO2 – carbon dioxide – is an odourless, colourless gas and every single human breathes this out every second they live and is plant food. OR
C – Carbon – diamonds are made from this !
They throw around how we must reduce our “carbon” but I don’t think they know what they are talking about.
I read that there are 85,000 units of CO2 in the atmosphere and only ONE of those is from humans that is some hefty fight for us all !!